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Lenz Geerk | The Table Portraits

Roberts Projects

5801 Washington Blvd Culver City Ca 90232

robertsprojectsla.com

Roberts Projects is pleased to present its first solo exhibition by painter Lenz Geerk. Known for his surreal paintings of soft figures caught in moments of contemplation, Geerk’s new series The Table Portraits raises questions about possession, distance, observation, and the participation of one’s own image.

Geerk creates psychologically charged paintings that are removed from any specific time or place. Emphasizing his subjects in such a way as to draw out the hidden emotions of the human psyche, Geerk depicts people at the threshold of excitation and in the throes of exploration. With postures and gestures a fiction of representation, Geerk imagines how a certain fragile moment, derived from neither model nor photograph, can instead be expressed through atmosphere and body language. The nearly monochromatic palettes, only occasionally warmed by other colors, adds to the aura of emotional tension.

He manipulates traditional techniques, bringing into form his distinct style of rendering the figure through soft acrylic color. Geerk’s linework, while treated delicately, punctuates each composition with broad brushstrokes. The effect is reminiscent of Picasso’s portraiture, and continues the nervous, intense vitality of Schiele’s hand.

Geerk’s employment of a repetitive subject, as did Matisse (a figure among a series of objects) and Balthus (a figure as a character in settings), remains a most expressive compositional element. His subjects, defined by their proud, romantic isolation, are notable for their preoccupation with a number of circular motifs. These objects – blueberries, a veil, flowers – appear to change shape with the position of the viewer. Intrinsic to this act of looking is how it elicits an exceptionally high degree of viewer self-awareness.

These links between voyeurism, theatricality, and eroticism are heightened by the subjects’ refused gaze and ambiguous poses. With bodies bent at the waist, weighed down by heavy necks and limbs, they look like yawning flowers wilting in the sun. The faces are tender, when visible, with eyes cast down or closed. The viewer is denied their identities while simultaneously is witness to their most private moments. Geerk poses the ordinary to bring out the extraordinary.

Lenz Geerk was born in Basel, Switzerland in 1988 and grew up with a fondness for classic modern art and comic books. He studied painting at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (2008-2013). Recent solo exhibitions include Galeria Acappella, Naples; Galerie Valentin, Paris; Galeria Mascota, Mexico City; Gerhard Hofland Gallery, Amsterdam; The Cabin, Los Angeles, among others. Geerk resides and works in Düsseldorf.

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For additional information, please contact Camille Weiner: 323.549.0223, camille@robertsprojectsla.com
Gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00am – 6:00pm.
Roberts Projects is located between Fairfax Avenue and La Cienega Boulevard.
Parking is available on the street and at Dunn Edwards located 1/2 block east of the gallery.

Published by Author

Kristine Schomaker is a new media and performance artist, painter
and art historian living and working at the Brewery artist complex in Los Angeles. For over
14 years she has been working with various interdisciplinary art forms including online virtual
worlds to explore identity and the hybridization of digital media with the physical world.
Whether virtual or physical, the object-based work Kristine creates combines elements of
color-based gestural abstraction, animation, pattern and design, neo-Baroque and Populence.
Using installation, text, photography, mixed media, video and performance for her ongoing
conceptual project My Life as an Avatar, she visualizes a narrative/dialogue with her
virtual persona, Gracie Kendal. Kristine then documents her experiences on her blog.
In 2012, exploring ideas of community, Kristine turned a local gallery into a modern
day creation of Gertrude Stein’s salon of the 1920’s with a live mixed-reality dinner
party merging the physical world with the online virtual world. Over the summer
she also performed The Bald and the Beautiful in which she had her head shaved
as a statement to challenge society’s standards of beauty. Currently, Kristine is
working as an Artist-in-Residence through the Linden Endowment for the
Arts creating an immersive virtual environment which she is planning
to bring into the physical world via sculpture/public art work.
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